1. Field
The exemplary embodiments relate to network file sharing systems and, more particularly, to a methods and apparatuses to transfer shared files to clients.
2. Technical Background
In related art applications, network file systems may be utilized for sharing business data and documents that are created and saved as electronic files. The network file system may utilize a client-server architecture. A client of the system may send a request to a file server and receive file data as a response to the request. The clients may assemble a file from the received data.
To improve the performance of the network file system, the related art applications have extended the architecture of the network file system by use of a distributed file system. Related art implementations of the extended architecture involve multiple file servers called data servers (DSs) that have distributed file data, and a management server called a meta-data server (MDS) that manages the location of the distributed file data. In the related art implementations, a client may send multiple requests in parallel to the multiple file servers. The multiple accesses may multiply the throughput of file access according to the number of file servers.
Related art implementations also utilize security requirements for the network file system to control the sharing of business data. To satisfy the security requirements, a security function called the Access Control List (ACL) may be used to secure the access to the data on a network file system. The ACL of the network file system is configured by an operator to export the data to specific users, user groups, or IP address segments. In other words, the ACL is a list of access control rules. In an example related art implementation, the ACL is implemented as a table. Each entry of the table may include a file path and an IP address segment. The network file system may decide on granting or denying access for each of network accesses to the files according to the contents of the ACL.